Combined chair and ironing board devices are well-known in the prior art. For most people, household chores are a fact of life. Vacuuming debris from carpeting, polishing furniture, waxing floors and cleaning windows are necessary tasks which must be done regularly to ensure a healthy and clean household. In particular, most consumers wash laundry on a regular basis. While many clothing and accessory items such as blue jeans, sweat shirts, socks, towels and bed linens can simply be tossed into the dryer, folded, and put away after being laundered, there are many items which require further care. Specifically, most dress items such as skirts, blouses, shirts and pants, as well we many casual goods, must be carefully ironed in order to smooth away wrinkles and give the item a neat and professional look. An often dreaded task, pressing clothing requires the use of a standard, electric iron and most importantly, an ironing board. Ironing boards are extremely useful devices configured specifically to facilitate the ironing process. Conveniently elevated and contoured to conform to the shape of collars and waistbands, ironing boards are necessary items found in most households.
While there is little dispute that ironing boards are necessary and practical accessories, there are some drawbacks associated with their use. Specifically, most ironing boards are constructed to be collapsible, thus folding flat for easy storage. Unfortunately, it is this very benefit which can hamper use of an ironing board. Simply stated, many consumers find that the folding legs of an ironing board are simply not sturdy enough to support the weight of clothing spread across the top of the board, and thus the board often wobbles off balance during use. Not surprisingly, the heavier the garment or the more clothing piled atop the board, the more unstable the board becomes. Should the user put too much weight on the board, or should the board become too unbalanced, it can easily topple over and fall, often creating quite a mess.
There remains a need for a convertible chair and ironing board apparatus which would offer the user a practical solution to the aforementioned problems. The foregoing apparatus would be specifically designed to transform a straight-back chair that is easily converted and transformable into a fully functioning and extremely stable ironing board. The apparatus would include a frame having a back support section for pivotally holding a back support member, such that the back support member pivots relative to the back support section from a vertical position to a horizontal position in a 270° rotation about back support pivot points for converting the back support member to a functioning ironing board. The straight back chair would also include a chair seat member having a movable seat section being movable from a horizontal position to a vertical position in a 90° rotation about seat pivot points to serve as a support member in order to hold a lower section of the back support member in the horizontal plane relative to the floor to function as an ironing board. Additionally, the chair seat member of the straight back chair would include a storage compartment located under the chair seat.